“How do you follow up on Fermi?” That’s the question we had going into NVIDIA’s press briefing for the GeForce GTX 680 and the Kepler architecture earlier this month. With Fermi NVIDIA not only captured the performance crown for gaming, but they managed to further build on their success in the professional markets with Tesla and Quadro. Though it was a very clearly a rough start for NVIDIA, Fermi ended up doing quite well in the end.

So how do you follow up on Fermi? As it turns out, you follow it up with something that is in many ways more of the same. With a focus on efficiency, NVIDIA has stripped Fermi down to the core and then built it back up again; reducing power consumption and die size alike, all while maintaining most of the aspects we’ve come to know with Fermi. The end result of which is NVIDIA’s next generation GPU architecture: Kepler.

Launching today is the GeForce GTX 680, at the heart of which is NVIDIA’s new GK104 GPU, based on their equally new Kepler architecture. As we’ll see, not only has NVIDIA retaken the performance crown with the GeForce GTX 680, but they have done so in a manner truly befitting of their drive for efficiency.

GTX 680

GTX 580

GTX 560 Ti

GTX 480

Stream Processors

1536

512

384

480

Texture Units

128

64

64

60

ROPs

32

48

32

48

Core Clock

1006MHz

772MHz

822MHz

700MHz

Shader Clock

N/A

1544MHz

1644MHz

1401MHz

Boost Clock

1058MHz

N/A

N/A

N/A

Memory Clock

6.008GHz GDDR5

4.008GHz GDDR5

4.008GHz GDDR5

3.696GHz GDDR5

Memory Bus Width

256-bit

384-bit

256-bit

384-bit

Frame Buffer

2GB

1.5GB

1GB

1.5GB

FP64

1/24 FP32

1/8 FP32

1/12 FP32

1/12 FP32

TDP

195W

244W

170W

250W

Transistor Count

3.5B

3B

1.95B

3B

Manufacturing Process

TSMC 28nm

TSMC 40nm

TSMC 40nm

TSMC 40nm

Launch Price

$499

$499

$249

$499

Technically speaking Kepler’s launch today is a double launch. On the desktop we have the GTX 680, based on the GK104 GPU. Meanwhile in the mobile space we have the GT640M, which is based on the GK107 GPU. While NVIDIA is not like AMD in that they don’t announce products ahead of time, it’s a sure bet that we’ll eventually see GK107 move up to the desktop and GK104 move down to laptops in the future.

What you won’t find today however – and in a significant departure from NVIDIA’s previous launches – is Big Kepler. Since the days of the G80, NVIDIA has always produced a large 500mm2+ GPU to serve both as a flagship GPU for their consumer lines and the fundamental GPU for their Quadro and Tesla lines, and have always launched with that big GPU first. At 294mm2 GK104 is not Big Kepler, and while NVIDIA doesn’t comment on unannounced products, somewhere in the bowels of NVIDIA Big Kepler certainly lives, waiting for its day in the sun. As such this is the first NVIDIA launch where we’re not in a position to talk about the ramifications for Tesla or Quadro, or really for that matter what NVIDIA’s peak performance for this generation might be.

Anyhow, we’ll jump into the full architectural details of GK104 in a bit, but let’s quickly talk about the specs first. Unlike Fermi or AMD’s GCN, Kepler is not a brand new architecture. To be sure there are some very important changes, but at a high level the workings of Kepler have not significantly changed compared to Fermi. With Kepler what we’re ultimately looking at is a die shrunk distillation of Fermi, and in the case of GK104 that’s specifically a distillation of GF114 rather than GF110.

Starting from the top, GTX 680 features a fully enabled GK104 GPU – unlike the first generation of Fermi products there are no shenanigans with disabled units here. This means GTX 680 has 1536 CUDA cores, a massive increase from GTX 580 (512) and GTX 560 Ti (384). Note however that NVIDIA has dropped the shader clock with Kepler, opting instead to double the number of CUDA cores to achieve the same effect, so while 1536 CUDA cores is a big number it’s really only twice the number of cores of GF114 as far as performance is concerned. Joining those 1536 CUDA cores are 32 ROPs and 128 texture units; the number of ROPs is effectively unchanged from GF114, while the number of texture units has been doubled. Meanwhile on the memory and cache side of things GTX 680 features a 256-bit memory bus coupled with 512KB of L2 cache.

As for clockspeeds, GTX 680 will introduce a few wrinkles courtesy of Kepler. As we mentioned before, the shader clock is gone in Kepler, with everything now running off of the core clock (or as NVIDIA likes to put it, the graphics clock). At the same time Kepler introduces the Boost Clock – effectively a turbo clock for the GPU – so we still have a 3rd clock to pay attention to. With that said, GTX 680 ships at a base clock of 1006MHz and a boost clock of 1058MHz. On the memory side of things NVIDIA has finally managed to fully hammer out their memory controller, allowing NVIDIA to ship with a memory clock of 6.006GHz.

Taken altogether, on paper GTX 680 has roughly 195% the shader performance, 260% the texture performance, 87% of the ROP performance, and 100% of the memory bandwidth of GTX 580. Or as compared to its more direct ancestor the GTX 560 Ti, GTX 680 has 244% of the shader performance, 244% of the texture performance, 122% of the ROP performance, and 150% of the memory bandwidth of GTX 560 Ti. Compared to GTX 560 Ti NVIDIA has effectively doubled every aspect of their GPU except for ROP performance, which is the one area where NVIDIA believes they already have enough performance.

On the power front, GTX 680 has a few different numbers to contend with. NVIDIA’s official TDP is 195W, though as with the GTX 500 series they still consider this is an average number rather than a true maximum. The second number is the boost target, which is the highest power level that GPU Boost will turbo to; that number is 170W. Finally, while NVIDIA doesn’t publish an official idle TDP, the GTX 680 should have an idle TDP of around 15W. Overall GTX 680 is targeted at a power envelope somewhere between GTX 560 Ti and GTX 580, though it’s closer to the former than the latter.

As for GK104 itself, as we’ve already mentioned GK104 is a smaller than average GPU for NVIDIA, with a die size of 294mm2. This is roughly 89% the size of GF114, or compared to GF110 a mere 56% of the size. Inside that 294mm2 NVIDIA packs 3.5B transistors thanks to TSMC’s 28nm process, only 500M more than GF110 and largely explaining why GK104 is so small compared to GF110. Or to once again make a comparison to GF114, this is 1050M (53%) more than GF114, which makes the fact that GK104 doubles most of GF114’s functional units all the more surprising. With Kepler NVIDIA is going to be heavily focusing on efficiency, and this is one such example of Kepler’s efficiency in action.

Last but not least, let’s talk about pricing and availability. GTX 680 is the successor to GTX 580 and NVIDIA will be pricing it accordingly, with an MSRP of $500. This is the same price that the GTX 580 and GTX 480 launched at back in 2010, and while it’s consistent for an x80 video card it’s effectively a conservative price given GK104’s die size. NVIDIA does need to bring their pricing in at the right point to combat AMD, but they’re in no more of a hurry than AMD to start any price wars, so it’s conservative pricing all around for the time being.

AMD’s competition of course is the recently launched Radeon HD 7970 and 7950. Priced at $550 and $450, the GTX 680 sits right in between them in terms of pricing. However with regard to gaming performance the GTX 680 is generally more than a match for the 7970, which is going to leave AMD in a tough spot. AMD’s partners do have factory overclocked cards, but those only close the performance gap at the cost of an even wider price gap. NVIDIA has priced the GTX 680 to undercut the 7970, and that’s exactly what will be happening today.

As for availability, we’re told that it should be similar to past high end video card launches, which is to say it will be touch and go. As with any launch NVIDIA has been stockpiling cards but it’s still a safe bet that GTX 680 will sell out in the first day. Beyond the initial launch it’s not clear whether NVIDIA will be able to keep up with demand over the next month or so. NVIDIA has been fairly forthcoming to their investors about how 28nm production is going, and while yields have been acceptable TSMC doesn’t have enough wafers to satisfy all of their customers at once, so NVIDIA is still getting fewer wafers than they’d like. Until very recently AMD’s partners have had a difficult time keeping the 7970 in stock, and it’s likely it will be the same story for NVIDIA’s partners.

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405 Comments

My point wasn't that the 680GTX isn't faster, it's however that it does stand up well against the 680GTX in performance.

As far as compute goes, I'm not sure I understand your premise. Frankly I think it's an invalid inference. I said kills it. If that somehow implies it means it losses in the other compute tests, I'm not sure how you got there. Again invalid inference of the data.Reply

You didn't get the point of what he meant. Yes AMD is loosing but mostly in games that already run 60+fps. The games AMD wins is where it's still not maxed out yet(below 60 fps).

Which maybe means if some big demanding games come out, the winning/loosing shceme might go back and forth. But right now, not much games out there will push those gpus unless you got very high resolutions and right now, I think 90% of gamers have 1080p and lower which still runs super smooth with 95% of graphical options enables on a 150$ GPU...

Still gotta say that this GTX 680 is really good for a flagship and the first one that's not uber huge and noisy and hot...Reply

SHOGUN 2 680 wins in top rez.from article " Total War: Shogun 2 is the latest installment of the long-running Total War series of turn based strategy games, and alongside Civilization V is notable for just how many units it can put on a screen at once. As it also turns out, it’s the single most punishing game in our benchmark suite"

OH WELL guess it's the metro2033 and crysis game engines cause the hardest game Nvidia 680 wins.Reply

No you're WRONG. 1. 608 wins 1 bench in Merto2033, and ties within bench error on the other two resolutions. The hardest game as stated by the reviewer (since you never read) is Shogun2 total war, and Nvidia makes a clean sweep at all resolutions there. In fact the Nvidia card wins everything but Crysis here, ties on Metro, and smokes everything else. If Metro isn't a tie, take a look at the tie Ryan has for Civ5 and get back to me... !(hint: Nvidia wins by far more in Civ5) So--- let's see, one game with wierd benching old benching and AMD favored benchmark (dumping the waterfall bench that Nvidia won on all the time) >(Crysis) One "tie" metro2033, then Nvidsia sweeps the rest of them. many by gigantic frame rate victories. Other places show Nvidia winning metro2003 by a lot. (pureoverclock for one)....No I'm not the one fudging, spinning and worse. You guys are. You lost, lost bad, man up.Reply

gt680 got more clocks, way higher memory bandwidth than 7970 thats why it got lower power load and price. but i think we can only compare 2 things if they have the "same" engine like drag race cars. both of them made a big leap from previous tech. and thats a win for us.btw, who comes out first ..amd. i say amd win period. so next time maybe they must release next gen gpu on the same time. Reply